okay so uh rhetorical mode number two description so uh description times goes hand in hand with narration you'd be hard-pressed to use narration without description it doesn't mean you can't use description by itself you could we'll talk about that but uh for your first uh essay this remembering an event essay description will be an essential mode you know it goes hand in hand with good narration because if you are telling a story from your past you are telling us what you experienced and if we think about the nature of experience uh what we saw what we heard we touched tasted smelled that demands description to convey that to a reader and description is essentially that it's a technique in which you are conveying the testimony of the senses that is the beginning of description sometimes we don't think about description as being linked to the senses you know the five senses that i just mentioned but it is like that is description to describe something and not use language that appeals to our sense of sight sound smell taste touch is not description like if somebody said somebody like said like uh describe your car he said something like well it's got a v8 engine that's not a description that's a detail right that description would have to appeal to the senses so maybe you talked about instead like the sound the engine makes when it revs or like what it feels like what it feels like in the car when the engine is like idling at a stop light you know kind of like the rumble that you could feel or maybe like the smell of gasoline when you uh hit the the gas pedal something like that like you need to invoke the senses that is description so that's where it begins uh and this first word is clueing us into exactly that what we are always striving for in descriptive writing is imagery oftentimes we think of image as being something we can like visually realize we see an image actually an image is anything that you can sense so we can see an image but we could use it for a smell or a taste or a feel or uh what have i left out smell or feel or sound right you can uh an image can be any of those things technically so it's language that appeals to the senses so you know the five senses but i'm also giving you the buzzwords here so your sense of sight or your visual sense your sense of sound or your oral sense your sense of smell or your olfactory sense your sense of taste your gustatory sense and your sense of touch which is your tactile sense again these are just the buzzwords if you were going to talk about description like in a formal in class essay you may want to use those terms uh you know for the academic audience they have that academic register so you want to include language that appeals to these five things and essentially there are two kinds of descriptive writing in academic writing two reasons you'd be asked to describe something at length uh and you'd aspire to imagery in both right but the two are objective description so objective description is called for quite a lot in certain professions that demand college degrees if you're going to go into medicine at all like if you're going to be a nurse your days will be filled with writing objective description if you're going to go into like the higher rungs of law enforcement like you're going to be like a detective same deal if you're going to be if you're going to go into the laboratory sciences or the hard sciences part of the scientific method is observations which is filled with objective description so objective description is then impartial dispassionate fact-based and a description that is even filled with scientific details so who you are doesn't at all enter into your objective description as a nurse you could be having a good day or a bad day but you need to uh give the same correct diagnosis you know you could be having a horrible day or a great day but as a detective you still need to find uh the right perpetrator kind of thing right so objective description strives towards that the key word in objective is object the only thing that matters in an objective description is the object you don't bring yourself into the description it is what it is there are no emotions no biases uh no memories linked to an objective description 30 people conduct an eject an objective description of the same object say this bottle of hand sanitizer and all 30 people would have a roughly similar descriptive paragraph because that's how it works the only thing that matters is the object we could talk about you know uh the colors on the bottle the blue and the red and the yellow and the white you could talk about uh the clear materials maybe you'd talk about the words on the back of the package you could uh talk about the materials you could talk about the weight but only things that objectively are true okay who you are your opinion the kind of day you have had none of that enters into your objective description all right and again if you're a scientist or you're a detective or you're a nurse like you can't let your day enter into that job right so objective description is representative of that the other kind of description you will use in college writing is subjective description which is almost like the opposite at least it's on the other end of the spectrum certainly so subjective description is opinionated it can be emotional it often is personal and the details instead of being scientific are now impressionistic it's not what is factually there it is now your impression of what is there think of like impressionist paintings like monet's uh purple haystacks haystacks aren't purple but his impression of them uh is what we see on the canvas not what a haystack objectively looks like right so the subjective description description it cares about the subject the person doing the describing you you are now more important than the object your impression of the object is what matters not the object as it appears truthfully uh scientifically in space or whatever right so now you know imagine uh how could we conduct a subjective description of hand sanitizer well some say like maybe in the course of a story like you during this current pandemic were like on a bus or a subway car and like you were in there for like 40 minutes and people coughing all around you and you like had to pull the you know the little rope to get the bus to make the next stop and like you were touching all of the horrible surfaces and then uh you know you say you're going to like i don't know a supermarket you like get into the supermarket and you see this uh pump bottle of hand sanitizer they're resting like where the carts are maybe that moment in your life would uh affect your description of it right because it wouldn't just be this scientific thing in space it would be like this thing that uh feels like a lifesaver you know i mean like it's like cleansing elixir as opposed to just hand sanitizer so you bring yourself to the description who you are subject matters more than what this is object and you know when will you get to use that in college writing unless you become a writer there are not a lot of instances where you'll do it professionally but certainly you know while you're knocking out your college degree you will have lots of occasions for a subjective description and some of the highest stakes essays you will ever write in college personal statements transfer essays scholarship essays always demand narration and therefore always demand description right so your subjective description uh moments will sometimes be high-stakes ones right so those are the two modes of descriptive writing but you're always striving to appeal to the five senses whether you're being objective or subjective we want sight sound smell taste and touch we need all five of those in there right so in both types of descriptive writing there are a couple of truths a couple of things you always will strive for beyond just trying to include the five senses first realize that the specific detail outshines the general statement readers crave specific details and after all if you're conveying the testimony of your senses you have to be specific or you don't control your testimony you allow other people to see or hear smell things that weren't actually there all right so you want to be specific you would never say in a descriptive essay something like and then we had dessert because uh dessert is too general what did you have for dessert nobody is envisioning the thing that you experienced you have not conveyed the testimony of your senses because now 30 different people if they're even envisioning it at all because it's such kind of a plain and boring sentence if they're envisioning your dessert they're all envisioning it different it's not your dessert at all it's what they're thinking of right so give us specifics you know what i mean like instead of saying it and then we had dessert you could say like and then we had strawberry ice cream on cake cones like it's not you don't give as much but the specifics all of the sudden uh work for the reader you know they they give the reader's brain something to latch onto you know in space because strawberry ice cream on a cake cone looks a certain way uh it smells a certain way it tastes a certain way it's cold in a certain way right so it's appealing to all these senses just because you were specific so be specific don't say like grandma's kitchen smelled oh good smell bad spelled weird we don't know you just say it smelled but if you say like grandma's kitchen smelled of frying onions or baking cookies all of a sudden we can smell that and we're more engaged as readers and if grandma's kitchen smells like frying onions be specific about that share the testimony of the senses so we are spelling the kitchen from your past if you don't give us specifics we'll be smelling something that is ours instead of something that is yours if we're smelling it all right because a sentence maybe was just so boring we didn't even think twice about it so be specific the other thing you realize is that concrete language always proves more effective than abstract language we use abstract language a lot we'll say something like man that was awesome or that was delicious or she is beautiful and we know what other people mean when they use these words but they are abstract meaning they don't beautiful doesn't look like anything awesome doesn't feel like anything you know to every single person uh these are subjective words abstract words if you said like the sunset was beautiful we get your opinion of the sunset but we cannot see that sunset you are not sharing that sunset with us you have not conveyed the testimony of the senses uh what colors were in the sky what temperature was it at what time of day was it were you at the beach were you in the city uh what did you see the sun descend into the pacific ocean or was it one of those pink and purple sunsets you only get because of smog you know that are so special to southern california uh your reader doesn't know unless you tell them right so you have to be concrete don't just leave us with the sunset with beautiful because then we're all seeing our own sunset and it's probably not the sunset that you wanted to share with us so be concrete and this goes with objective description too right i mean the more detailed and the more concrete the description is certainly the better the police report better the nurses report better the scientific method and the better chances of curing a patient or solving a crime or finding new and uh helpful conclusions for whatever you're pursuing in your scientific field so specific is better concrete language is better all right those are just two truths all right so that's kind of description in general so let's think now about writing so say you want to package this descriptive this description stuff in an essay and that's rare you know you're rarely going to write an entire essay that is descriptive probably it's more like a paragraph that is uh descriptive throughout so i use the word thesis statement even though maybe topic sentence would be more like it but a thesis for descriptive essay or more often a topic sentence for a descriptive paragraph identifies the object described and conveys the reason for the description so these are the two things that should be clear to the reader fairly early on what is the thing you're describing and why are you describing it so with objective description these two things are usually pretty clear describing a crime scene because there was a crime or describing a patient because the patient is sick like that kind of thing but when you get to subjective writing you have a lot of options like uh my first car because it made me feel like an adult or describing my little brother's bedroom because it was disgusting whatever like we usually have a reason for describing something especially subjectively right we're not just taking a picture with words and just listing everything that we see here feel smell and taste right we usually have a reason for description so like if you know a patient is having stomach pains do you need to talk about the color eye shadow the patient is wearing probably not right that's the idea so usually a descriptive passage is focused okay so what's being described why are you describing those two things would be in a thesis statement however effective description especially effective subjective description rarely needs a thesis um why is that well if you're describing your brother's bedroom in a story because it is disgusting then chances are if you describe it as disgusting your reader will get it you know what i mean like to say my brother's bedroom was disgusting may be a wasted sentence because the paragraph itself might convey that that idea is called dominant impression meaning uh the main idea conveyed by a descriptive passage and the idea is that there should be one if you are committing say 300 words of your narrative essay to describing something there better be a really important reason for that right we don't just throw away 300 words casually if it's a lengthy descriptive passage there has to be an agenda there a reason for that description so i mentioned this this brother's bedroom that was disgusting say you're like writing about some story from your past and you had to get like from point a to point b really quickly right like almost a life or death kind of thing and you get off the phone with whoever is summoning you and you say like a parent like your dad's like dad i need to keep the car uh immediately like it's it's an emergency he says okay go for it you say okay give me your keys oh your brother had him last so you had to go you have to go into your brother's bedroom to find the keys right and so therefore the brother's bedroom becomes an obstacle and describing it as disgusting becomes important to let your reader know just what an obstacle it was okay so now you have an agenda and a reason to describe the brother's bedroom that makes sense in the context of the essay so how do you do this like what do you keep in mind as you're describing your brother's bedroom as disgusting well first select the details carefully right you know what your agenda is disgusting so choose the disgusting details meaning you're not going to say things like uh my brother's bedroom has really great natural lighting and you're not going to say things like my brother has a really nice uh hdtv like you don't say those things if you're trying to emphasize to us that the brothers bedroom is disgusting right maybe you'll talk about like uh the funk of socks and pizza crusts in the air and you'll talk about like the mysteriously moist carpet and you'll talk about like um the fast food trash all over the room and you'll talk about the mounds of clothes and you talk about like the centimeter it seemed of dust on the shelves they give us the disgusting details and if all the details are disgusting then we get it the bedroom's disgusting you don't have to tell us because you've just showed us so effectively but also remember to relate those details in a way that supports your agenda so don't just rely on the details to do the work you have to help the details along imagine uh let's go back to grandma's kitchen right where the the smell of frying onions in grandma's kitchen imagine grandma's kitchen is an important location in your narrative essay and when you were a child maybe you often went to your grandma's after school sometimes you brought friends over to your grandmas and you guys like always entered in the back door into the kitchen and you wanted to describe grandma's kitchen as an extension of grandma as kind of embarrassing you know something that embarrassed you for whatever reason so you choose details you know i mean like maybe in the kitchen didn't smell a frying onions maybe she was always like boiling pig's feet or turkey necks and like maybe she always had her like bras hung on the kitchen chairs and maybe uh you know she herself would embarrass you when they were like a pinch of a cheek and a kiss on the face and like maybe even like the door as you open the kitchen door to enter made like this really horrible squeaking noise right so all these things that kind of embarrassed you in front of your friends but maybe later on in the essay uh maybe grandma is gone and she's died and like you're selling the house it's your last time in the kitchen and now as an adult you walk into that kitchen through the same back door to make makes that same squeak and it's no longer embarrassing it's the same sound but now it's a sound that comforts you makes you feel loved makes you miss your grandma and it's the same sound and it's working in two different moments in the essay so you gotta describe it as well don't just rely on the details to do the work um color them with your agenda in mind as well right and consider figurative language meaning a creative comparison it's one of the best ways to get a subjective description really rolling is to use figurative language or a creative comparison um you just think of think of the color red right lots of things are red and red would take on a different significance based on how you kind of qualified that red is it blood red is it watermelon red think of the difference between those two sounds like those two words like uh how heavy blood red feels and how like light and summery and carefree watermelon red sounds so think about that right any little comparison could carry a lot of weight the seriousness of blood the lightness of watermelon both red both fairly similar colors but a creative comparison can go a long way so uh consider that in your dominant impression as well no creative comparisons and objective description of course but in subjective description i wouldn't say the more the merrier but they're welcome right they they can they can really convey meaning to your uh to your reader as you will see in some of the reading homework for this week okay so then i think the last order of business then is organization so you know what you're going to describe you know why you're going to describe it now how do you actually order those details like what is the best way to go about doing that well unlike narration where there is a rigid organizational pattern for you to follow situation conflict struggle resolution description uh is much more open to your interpretation you get to curate your description much more personally than you kind of get to with some of the other techniques so essentially there is no single correct or like i guess right sure i understand shut up siri um there is no single correct method or direction for organizing a passage of description so there are many to choose from and none of them are necessarily better than the other your only job is making sure that you pick a method or a direction and you stick to it all right so i'll give you three the most popular options but you have lots of different options the the only bad option is not thinking about how you're organizing the descriptive feed okay so what you're describing sometimes will help you make that decision uh so the options include or not are not limited to temporal meaning describing something chronologically so maybe you describe your brother's bedroom as you encounter obstacles the first thing at the door and then through the doorway then the first thing you encounter and then the smell finally hits you and then waiting through something to get closer to the keys like you describe the things on a timeline this is how i encountered the disgusting details so this is the order that i present them that could work maybe uh oh and some transitions you could use if that's the case words like next and after like time transitions spatial also works so you describe things as they appear in space and you would move like in a direction like left to right right to left top to bottom something like that so maybe you like stand at the threshold of your brother's disgusting bedroom and you scan your head from left to right describing all the disgusting details that also makes sense right you could do it that way as well and words you would use here would be more spatial words next behind further above that kind of thing and then also another good option is to describe things by significance like start with the least disgusting thing and build up to the most disgusting thing using words like first next last most of all so you could put the disgusting details in the brother's bedroom like on a hierarchy like on a ladder start with the least disgusting move towards the most disgusting any of those could work they all would probably work really well totally up to you as the writer to decide which makes the most sense for your narrative right so you have a lot of freedom with organization so hopefully you see how this you know really mentioned narration and seamless fashion if you are telling a story you are also sharing not just your experience but how you experienced your experience i.e your senses right what did you see hear smell taste feel a big part of uh the remembering an event essay as i hope that you realize and uh i hope this all makes some some sense right so rhetorical mode 2 in the books description